Process for producing filling material for three-dimensionally shaped textile structures and apparatus therefor
The present invention relates to a novel production process for a textile filling material for three-dimensionally shaped textile structures and to an adapted apparatus for carrying out the process.
The filling material used for three-dimensionally shaped textile structures, for example pillows or bedding articles, is customarily feather and/or down and/or fiber. Filling fiber is generally incorporated in the form of card webs. These structures are mechanically not very stable, since the fibers adhere only loosely to one another. In use, therefore, these webs frequently disintegrate, forming clumps which can no longer be separated. Such card-consolidated filling webs based on bicomponent fibers are known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,589,956.
It is known to produce swabs of wadding from continuous lengths of wadding by consolidating a length of wadding comprising absorbent fibers and at least surface-fusible fibers by means of a heat treatment and subsequently stamping the swabs of wadding out of the consolidated length of wadding. For instance, DE-A-3,804,222 describes such a process, characterized in that the length of wadding is selectively heated, and subsequently cooled, in the areas to be stamped out, before the stamping out takes place. With the prior art processes appreciable loss of material as waste is likely, since with the stamping out of the length of wadding only parts thereof can be used directly. According to statements made in DE-A-3,804,222, the waste can amount to about 35-45% of the length of wadding.